Review: Live 11 more "resource intensive" than 10?

[Max Oepen]

Has the code become less efficient?
I'd really like to get to the bottom of whether full releases of Ableton Live are becoming increasingly more resource-hungry (CPU), or whether that's a myth.
This review from Engaget makes that claim for Live 11 vs 10, and 10 vs 9 etc.:

"Just know that Live 11 is a bit more resource intensive that Live 10. And Live 10 was a lot more resource intensive than Live 9. So if your machine was already struggling after the last big update, you might want to wait until you can upgrade your hardware too."

In other words, if I load a live-set created in Live 10 into Live 11, will it now consume more resources/ pose a bigger load on the CPU?

I just find it hard to believe that Ableton's engineers would be that sloppy or willing to sacrifice the efficiency of THE most popular life-performance tool, where computing efficiency ranks so much higher in importance than in a studio for example.

[jlgrimes]

There were times in the distant past where Ableton was very resource hungry compared to other DAWS.

Some of it is for Live playback where you don't want any pops and clicks while editing audio.

But I do think they are working through issues with stability.

[[jur]]

The simple thing you can do is to download Live11 demo and try by yourself.
I did quite some tests and I can't say that L11 uses more CPU vs L10. There's some new devices like that can be quite hungry, but if you run the same set in L10 and L11 you won't notice any difference really. Sometimes you'll see L11 uses a couple percent more, sometimes a couple percent less.

From what I remember the transition between L9 and L10 gave similar results.

[Max Oepen]

Thanks. Yes, I will do my own testing, but that will be anecdotal only.

I'm looking for some hard evidence (statements from Ableton themselves or from their engineers) regarding the actual changes in the underlying engine of the program. I find statements like that of the author in article from my OP frankly kind of reckless, but all too common.
I care about this, because I do run Ableton at the absolute limits of my machines' capabilities, i.e. lowest buffers with lots and lots of live signal-processing.

My main problem is that there is no shortage of opinions, and everybody swears up and down that it's this way or that way.
I want facts

[[jur]]

Well, I gave you facts from my own testings. I'm also very wary regarding this partly because my main machine is from 2010...
If you need facts, really just grab L11's demo
Essentially, the same features work equally between these versions. You find new features with each iterations that make use of the more powerful machines that evolve meanwhile, but that's a different story.

[Calagan]

I use a macbook pro 15" laptop from mid-2012, running Mojave.

I tested the problem scientifically, testing the exact same live sets (full of 3d party plugins) in Live 10 and Live 11, then using a test set from Live 10 (with only built-in plugins) and adding tracks until it cracks in Live 10 and Live 11.

On my machine, with my setup, I found the exact same CPU use (+/- 1%) and track limit.
So for me, there is no difference at all...

Some people have a lot of issues with Live 11, on a lot of different setups (I saw people having issues with the exact same laptop and OS as mine) but until now it is not clear if it's only perception (the Live 11 CPU meter is very different) or if it's an objective (and very bizarre) issue.

The only way to know it is to test by yourself. I was afraid to run 2 different install of Live in my laptop, but after I did that I didn't notice any issue.
After I upgraded to Live 11, I removed live 10 with any hassle and perceptible issue...

[[jur]]

I was afraid to run 2 different install of Live in my laptop

There's absolutely no problem in doing this. I've always had a lot of different versions and builds on my machine, it's not an issue and it's actually documented somewhere on Ableton's KB.